American journalists have long been bitterly opposed
to the recruitment of reporters by U.S. intelligence agencies,
and the fraudulent use of journalism credentials by intelligence
operatives. Since the mid-1970s, journalists and others-including
some of the nation's top foreign policy-makers-believed that the
CIA could no longer recruit reporters as spies. They shared a
widespread but inaccurate assumption that the U.S. government
had banned such objectionable practices as part of a package of
reforms revamping codes of conduct for covert intelligence operations
adopted in response to recommendations of the 1976 Church Committee
report. In its investigation of U.S. foreign and military intelligence
operations, the committee-the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho)-found that more than
50 American journalists had worked clandestinely as CIA agents
during the Cold War era. The committee's final report strongly
condemned this practice and unequivocally called on the intelligence
community to "permit American journalists and news organizations
to pursue their work without jeopardizing their credibility in
the eyes of the world through covert use of them."

In fact, during the subsequent two decades, the CIA merely curtailed
the practice.

The issue was spotlighted anew in the spring of 1996 by the release
of a Council on Foreign Relations task force report on U.S. intelligence-gathering
policies and practices-which in turn inadvertently prompted the
passage of the first U.S. law explicitly permitting the practice.
Ironically, many of the members of Congress who supported the
new statute thought they were effectively prohibiting the covert
use of journalists by the CIA.

The episode could be written off as yet another example of the
Law of Unintended Consequences-were the consequences not so potentially
calamitous. The perception that American journalists are agents
of the U.S. government compromises their professional integrity,
impedes their ability to function in many parts of the world,
and often puts their lives in jeopardy. Yet the CIA's endorsement
of the new law, coupled with the agency's admission that it reserves
the right to use this practice as an avenue for clandestine information-gathering,
can only magnify these suspicions. Thus, CPJ and other leading
journalism and press freedom organizations are pressing for an
unambiguous statutory prohibition of all uses of journalists and
journalism credentials by U.S. intelligence agencies. A CPJ task
force co-chaired by Terry Anderson and Walter Cronkite is spearheading
the fight.

IN FEBRUARY 1996, an independent task force of the Council on
Foreign Relations led by Richard Haass, a former senior director
for Near East and South Asian Affairs of the National Security
Council in the Bush administration, proposed taking a "fresh
look at limits on the use of non-official 'covers' for hiding
and protecting those involved in clandestine activities."
Haass later publicly expanded on this point, challenging what
he characterized as the prohibition on the use of journalists
as undercover intelligence agents. The outcry among journalists-including
many who are members of the Council of Foreign Relations-led council
president Leslie Gelb to distance himself and the council from
the task force and its recommendations.

The reaction to the controversy among U.S. intelligence professionals,
however, was quite different-and far more disturbing to journalists.
John Deutch, director of Central Intelligence, appeared before
Congress and said there was no need to change U.S. policy as Haass
had advocated, since the CIA already had the power to use U.S.
reporters as spies. Under the terms of the guidelines adopted
after the Church Commission report, the CIA director retained
the right to approve such recruitment if he judged it necessary,
Deutch explained. Deutch received public support for his interpretation
of the CIA's prerogative from Stansfield Turner, the CIA chief
in the Carter administration. Speaking to a gathering of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, Turner revealed that he had authorized
the use of journalists in intelligence operations three times
during his tenure as CIA director.

Journalists, shocked to hear that a practice most thought had
been banned was in fact still permitted, were not mollified by
Deutch's assurances that the CIA "will not use journalists American
journalists, except under, very, very rare circumstances."
Louis Boccardi, president of the Associated Press, and Tom Johnson,
president of CNN, met with Deutch and asked him to pledge publicly
that he would never call on journalists to gather information
clandestinely for U.S. intelligence services. Boccardi pointed
to the case of Terry Anderson, who had been taken hostage by the
Hezbollah in Lebanon while a foreign correspondent for Associated
Press on the false accusation of information-gathering for the
CIA and held for almost eight years. And Johnson noted that a
CNN crew assistant in Baghdad had been tortured by Iraqi security
forces seeking to extract a confession of his and CNN's purported
collaboration with the CIA. "The CIA should say it's not
going to use the cover of journalism for the work that is does,"
Boccardi declared before the meeting. "They have a function,
we have a function, and I think mixing them exposes our people
all over the world to a level of danger that's extremely worrisome."

In response, Deutch refused to reject the practice categorically.
"As Director of Central Intelligence," he said he told
Boccardi and Johnson, "I must be in a position to assure
the president and the members of his National Security Council
and this country that there will never come a time when the United
States cannot ask a willing citizen to assist in combating an
extreme threat to the nation."

Amidst this controversy, then-Congressman William B. Richardson
of New Mexico proposed an amendment to the pending intelligence
services appropriations bill that would ban the use of reporters
for U.S. news organizations in covert intelligence operations
unless the president gave written authorization to the House and
Senate intelligence oversight committees certifying that a particular
exception to the policy was justified by "overriding national
security concerns."

Richardson said he hoped to "ensure that neither the independence
guaranteed to the press by the Constitution nor the lives of journalists
are endangered by blurring the distinction between reporters as
commentators on government and reporters as instruments of government."

While Richardson's initial intent may have been to put an end
to the CIA's covert use of journalists, in subsequent debate he
agreed to add language to his amendment stating that the ban would
not preclude "voluntary cooperation with the United
States Intelligence Community [sic]." Given that any such
collaboration in a democracy would presumably never be compulsory,
this caveat effectively rendered the other restrictions meaningless.

Passed overwhelmingly in a 417-to-6 House vote, the Richardson
amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year
1997 (H.R. 3259) stated:

(A) Policy-It is the policy of the United States that an element
of the Intelligence community may not be used as an agent or asset
for the purposes of collecting intelligence any individual who-1)
is authorized by contract or by the issuance of press credentials
to represent himself or herself, either in the United States,
or abroad, as a correspondent of a United States news media organization;
or (2) is officially recognized by a foreign government as a representative
of a United States media organization.

(B) Waiver-The President may waive subsection (a) in the case
of an individual if the President certifies in writing that the
waiver is necessary to address the overriding national security
interest of the United States. The certification shall be made
to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House
of Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of
the Senate.

(C) Voluntary Cooperation-Subsection (a) shall not be construed
to prohibit the voluntary cooperation of any person who is aware
that the cooperation is being provided to an element of the United
States Intelligence Community.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence convened a hearing
on July 17 to discuss the use of journalists in CIA operations.
Terry Anderson, a CPJ board member and former AP Bureau Chief
in Lebanon; Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC's "Nightline";
and Mortimer B. Zuckerman, chairman and editor in chief of U.S.
News and World Report and chairman and co-publisher of The Daily
News, testified before the Intelligence Committee about the threats
that this policy represented-to the physical safety and professional
integrity of members of the press, and to the very principles
of press freedom. All three stated their absolute opposition to
the use of journalists in CIA operations and demanded on behalf
of their colleagues around the world that an absolute and unalterable
ban be set in place. In his testimony, Anderson told of the life-threatening
dangers for a journalist in an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust.
"I have been accused of being a spy, not just on the occasion
of my captivity, but on other occasions in various places. I was
told by a number of people that I was on a list of CIA agents
kept by the fundamentalist Shiites who captured me. That is a
perception that is very difficult to disprove. It's hard to argue
with them. They are very suspicious
people."

"The damage has already been done," continued Anderson,
"I believe, most prominently by Director Deutch's acknowledgment
that there were exceptions to the general rule and that such things
have happened in the past. So, the best thing we can do is try
to repair the damage by a greater prohibition, without exceptions.
We are talking about a real danger; this is not imaginary. A statement
of formal exception-no matter how hedged or restricted-would simply
be an acknowledgment to those who suspect us of being spies that
'Yes, on occasion, you're right.'"

Ted Koppel cautioned the Intelligence Committee of the implications
and limitations of this new policy. "If the CIA must, on
occasion, use the role of an American journalist to conceal one
of its operatives and to protect the greater national interest,
it will do so, regardless of what is decided by Congress. But
let that continue to be in the knowledge that a free press is
being endangered and that American law is being broken,"
he said. "How often the CIA would actually use such cover
is beside the point," he stressed. "The relevant question
is how often it would be assumed, both at home and abroad, that
American reporters are working with a second, secret agenda."

LEGITIMATE REPORTERS RISK serious repercussions when
they work under suspicion of being intelligence operatives.
In a July letter of protest sent to all members of the U.S. Senate,
CPJ Chair Kati Marton urged them to support a "complete and
unalterable ban on the use of journalists as intelligence operatives,
and on the fraudulent use of journalistic credentials and agency
affiliation as cover for espionage activities." Marton included
in the letter the story of her parents' 1955 arrest in Hungary
on false charges of affiliation with the CIA. Her parents, Hungarian
nationals and correspondents for the Associated Press and United
Press International, were imprisoned for reporting the truth to
the rest of the world about the Stalinization of their country.
Sentenced to 25 years in prison on groundless charges, they were
forced to leave their young daughter to the care of strangers
until their case was brought to international attention almost
two years later. "My parents' arrest has had an unlimited
impact on my work," said Marton. "I'm drawn to debunking
oppression. I started out in a part of the world where, if you
strayed from imposed views you lost your job or your life or both.
In my parents' case it was a loss of freedom." She concluded
by underscoring that "Journalists like my parents and Terry
Anderson know from their own personal experience that a policy
which permits the use of journalists in intelligence operations
jeopardizes the safety of all journalists working in dangerous
and repressive countries."

Senator Robert Kerrey, Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, replied to Marton's letter on Aug. 21, stating
that "there are imaginable scenarios where only a member
of the press, clergy, or the Peace Corps would have the access
necessary to prevent the loss of life," and that the CIA
should have access to the intelligence gathering potential of
all professions if and when it is deemed necessary for national
security. "When lives are at risk or vital interests are
at risk, I don't see why any American patriot should be forbidden
to cooperate with an American intelligence agency," Kerrey
continued. Another Democratic Senator, John Kerry of Massachusetts,
also expressed opposition to the flat ban that Richardson had
proposed, but was more concerned about the impact on journalists
of continued public discussion of the issue. As he put it, "if
they weren't tainted before, they sure as hell will be tainted
afterwards."

Senate Bill 1718, the Senate's version of the intelligence authorization
act, contained no language on the issue of the CIA's use of journalists
as spies. The conference committee, however, rolled in the House
amendment virtually verbatim, but with one critical change: Not
just the president, but the CIA director as well, could waive
the ban on the use of journalists in covert operations by writing
to the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees. This
is the version of the bill that became law on Oct. 11, 1996, with
President Clinton's signing of the 1997 Intelligence Authorization
Act.

IN HER LETTER TO THE SENATE, Kati Marton warned that "The
disturbing acknowledgment that the CIA has waived restrictions
on the use of journalistic credentials in intelligence-gathering
operations in the past and wishes to retain the right to do so
again, may have already led some foreign leaders to believe that
the CIA and leading U.S. policy-makers are actively urging an
end to official constraints on the use of journalists for espionage."

The repercussions of this recent change in U.S. policy have already
begun to inform the intelligence practices of other nations. The
Russian daily Izvestiya published an article on Dec. 7, 1996,
reporting that Russia's Federal Security Service planned to create
a new department of intelligence operations to manipulate the
news coverage of security issues, resulting from its failure to
control public opinion during the Chechen war. On Dec. 20, The
Moscow Times ran an article illustrating the dangers for Russian
journalists already engendered by this policy. An unnamed source
was quoted saying that "the FSB (Federal Security Service)
is putting correspondents in danger especially in Chechnya. [They]
are already convinced that we are all spies, without the FSB advertising
that they use journalists as sources for their operations."

"There is no essential difference between the work of a spy
and a journalist; both collect information in the same way-just
the end consumers are different," said Maj. Gen. Yury Kobaldze
of Russia's SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service. "Journalists
make the best spies; they have more freedom of access than diplomats.
The Americans' moral stand on not using journalists is artificial,
and not a little duplicitous."

Looking beyond the immediate threats to the lives of journalists,
the threat this law poses to the integrity of journalism is profound.
In the United States, the First Amendment protects the rights
of the press to practice its craft without fear or favor from
the government. If American journalists become agents of government
rather than its critics, as they already are in so many countries,
the practice will have a corrosive effect on our democracy. "Whatever
gains may be justified and whatever grounds may be used to justify
intelligence work by the press, in whatever form it may take,
it seems to me that these gains must still be assessed in the
context of what they do to the press as an institution in a free
society," Zuckerman testified before the Senate Intelligence
Committee. "To be the instrument of government rather than
a constitutional check on government would undermine the good
that independent journalism does for an open society."

Kate Houghton has been board liaison and assistant to the executive
director of CPJ since July 1996. She has a bachelor's degree in
history from New York University.